July 20, 2007

Settlers’ Defiance Reflects Postwar Israeli Changes

By JENNIFER MEDINA

Children play in a disputed building in Hebron where 100 settlers have moved into an Arab neighborhood.

The New York Times

Settlers in Hebron have occupied a site in the heart of an Arab area.

HEBRON, West Bank, April 20 — One night last month, 100 Jewish settlers marched down the main road here with little more than a stack of sleeping bags and claimed a vacant four-story building in the middle of an Arab neighborhood.

When an Israeli officer arrived to investigate, they handed him papers that they said proved they were the new rightful owners. After he left, they danced and sang to celebrate the first major compound that Jews had acquired in the ancient city of Hebron in two decades.

Spring 2007 was not expected to be a time of settler assertion. After the evacuation of 9,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza 20 months ago, Ehud Olmert was elected prime minister on a platform that included removing thousands more settlers from the West Bank and an end to the occupation of large swaths of that territory.

But much has changed in the past year. The militants of Hamas are in power in the Palestinian government, and Israel’s war with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah last summer has left Mr. Olmert politically weak.

Those who took over the Hebron building now say with confidence that they will stay for many decades.

“We know that we must say, ‘This is my place,’ and be determined to live in it,” said Yesca Levinger, 31, who is sharing a small room in the building with her husband and three children.

Political analysts say the settlers see an opening.

“They finished licking their wounds,” said Akiva Eldar, a columnist for Haaretz. “They feel much stronger because there is a kind of consensus that the disengagement was a mistake. They paid the price for the mistake, they are the underdogs and everybody in the Israeli mainstream has to ask for their forgiveness. The government will be very careful not to touch them.”

On Tuesday, Israel’s Independence Day, thousands of advocates plan to march to the site of Homesh, a northern West Bank settlement that the government evacuated in 2005. This week, the Israeli news media quoted military officials offering approval of the march, but on Friday they appeared to reverse that decision. A spokesman for the Israeli Army said officers would “take legal action” against anyone who tried to enter the area.

But organizers say warnings are not likely to matter in the West Bank, where blue and white posters proclaiming “Return to Homesh” were plastered on nearly every bus stop. Such protests have already had some success — when an evacuation of a settlement in Amona erupted in violent clashes, the army and the government were criticized as much as the settlers.

Mrs. Levinger is pursuing the same strategy as her father-in-law, Rabbi Moshe Levinger, who led the first group of Jews to settle in the area 39 years ago, just months after the Arab-Israeli war in 1967 that led to the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Then, as now, the Israeli government debated how to handle the conquered areas while the settlers established a foothold in this city.

Hebron, according to the Bible, is the first place in ancient Israel where the patriarch Abraham bought land. On that land is a tomb said to hold the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs.

The newly seized building atop a barren dusty hill here has become another symbol in the battle among settlers, Palestinians and the Israeli government. But it also represents the diminishing hopes for any chance of Israel making a deal with the Hamas-led Palestinian government.

“We have to put an end to this idea that if we give up our homes we will get something peaceful from terrorists,” said Yishai Hollender, a spokesman for the Yesha Council, which represents settlers in the West Bank.

“Have we learned nothing from our history, from Lebanon, from Gush Katif?” he added, referring to the largest bloc of settlements, Harvest Bloc in Hebrew, to be removed from Gaza and to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. “We have hope that there is or will be quiet, but there never is.”

The settlements are viewed by much of the world as illegal because they are built on land taken in war, and as an obstacle to peace and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Over nearly four decades they have grown, with many of the enclaves looking like ordinary suburbs. There are now 240,000 Jews living among 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and another 200,000 Jews living in areas of Jerusalem also conquered in 1967.

For each of the last five years, the population of the settlements has grown by nearly 5 percent, twice the rate of the previous average growth, according to Peace Now, a group that opposes the settlements and closely tracks them. Kiryat Arba, the Jewish settlement less than a mile northeast of Hebron, has more than doubled in the last two decades, to 7,000 residents today. Hebron itself, considered to have some of the most uncompromising of the settlers, has some 700 Jews.

Settlers in Hebron say they bought their new building legally, but Defense Minister Amir Peretz has said their takeover is illegal because they did not get permission from security forces and the settlers should be evacuated. He was overruled by the attorney general, who gave the settlers two weeks to make their case to a civil court.

Mr. Olmert has said he wants to avoid the kinds of emotional confrontations that marked the Gaza evacuation so it is unlikely he will remove the settlers before all legal avenues are exhausted.

Supporters and opponents say the outcome of the building in Hebron will show how much the government is willing to confront the settlers in what the fiercest critics say amounts to a new settlement, with close to 100 residents already.

The back of the building abuts an old Arab cemetery, on a small road used frequently by Palestinian residents. The settlers say the building is the best spot they could find.

For years, the settlers have wanted to claim a spot on the road that leads to the Tomb of the Patriarchs and connects Hebron to Kiryat Arba. In 2002, 12 Israelis were killed in an ambush on that road.

Palestinian advocates have raised concerns that the building will eventually prompt tighter curfews or shut off another part of the city.

“Everybody is scared and very angry, because it means a whole area is in danger,” said Emad Hamdan, who runs the Hebron Rehabilitation Center and is representing the man who says he owns the house. “It’s going to be another disaster.”

Mr. Hamdan also said the Palestinian man was prepared to take the issue to the Supreme Court to get his house back. Beyond that, there are fears of violence — there have been some reports of young Palestinians throwing rocks at the settlers. And a white Star of David is spray-painted on the front door of a Palestinian family living across the street.

For now, the settlers are calling their compound “House of Peace,” but are also considering “Martyrs’ Peak.” To express their displeasure, some of the Israeli news media have termed it the “House of Dispute.”

From the balconies, it is possible to see the curved terrain for several miles south, east and north. A few Israeli soldiers say they had a weekly training meeting on the roof there every Saturday, even before the settlers took over. Now, about a dozen of them are sleeping on the top floor every night.

It is not a luxury complex, but the residents are settling in. They have installed basic electrical wiring and plumbing in the last week, though there are still no functioning showers. The crews on the top floor are working quickly to install drywall over the bare concrete and put up their first few bedroom doors.

As they sweep the floors and tack posters on the walls, the boys here chat excitedly about a permanent study hall, several apartments and perhaps a local store.

“We know how to fight again, how to show this is our future,” said Malkiel Bar-Hai, 18, who came from his home in the Golan Heights after his friend sent him a text message saying they were looking for more volunteers.

His face, sweaty and dusty, stiffens as he talks about the recent violence. “We bring it onto ourselves if we act as if this is not our land, like somebody is doing us a favor to let us be here,” he said. “Now we know that if we leave, they still hate us and attack us.”

The settlers say they used money from a wealthy American donor to buy the building from a man living in Jordan. Palestinian advocates deny that, saying that the man who owns the property still lives in Hebron and will fight to reclaim it. There have been reports that the Palestinian who sold the house is being interrogated by the police in Jericho.

For now, the settlers are capitalizing on the government’s silence. But they also have vocal support from many quarters. Several members of Parliament, including some from Mr. Olmert’s party, Kadima, say they support the settlers’ actions.

“If they are not allowed to stay, it will create a terrible situation,” said Otniel Schneller, a member of Parliament and a settler who has helped the government negotiate with fellow settlers in the past and who supports giving up part of the West Bank under certain conditions. He said he could not think of an argument to persuade them to abandon the building in Hebron.

“Who do we have to talk to any more?” he said. “There is no Palestinian government. They call it a government, but it is not a government, it is a collection of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.”